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Old 07-31-2012, 01:43 PM   #9
chillzATL
Location: ATL
Join Date: Jul 2000
Posts: 847
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Re: Jan Hermansson Videos

Quote:
Mark Murray wrote: View Post
Let's see ... he was 69 and had a bad hip. It was very clearly a choreographed demonstration.

I think you misspoke. Perhaps you didn't realize that Jan Hermansson moved to Tokyo around 1965 (were you even born then?) to train and did a lot of odd jobs to survive. Have you done that? Maybe you should do that for 15 years and when you hit 69, tell us if you still have the same thoughts. I certainly don't think you would.

If I compare your aikido to Shioda, Tomiki, Shirata, Ueshiba, Mochizuki, do you think you're going to look good? Or will your aikido look sloppy, have bad timing, and zero understanding of aiki? So maybe, instead of tossing rocks from inside the glass house, perhaps polishing the mirrors would be a better endeavor.

I think he's more than earned some respect. What have you done to earn it?

Mark
c'mon Mark, he didn't take shots at the man on a personal level and anecdotal facts about the man doesn't change the fact that from a technical perspective it looks like a bad big guy demo. It's no more disrespectful to say that than it is to frequently point out to people that they didn't get aiki, don't understand what aiki is, can't really use their aikido and practice with overly compliant ukes. The humor of the demo was not initially obvious to me either (no sound) and after reading the IHTBF column, I was a little disappointed too, but once I turned up the volume I got it and enjoyed it for what it was. Your followup also provided some additional context for why the demo looked like it did that nobody is going to have otherwise. Without the added context, from a purely technical perspective, would you see it any differently than he did?
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